Honor Among Thieves

The tall, athletic man stepped off the plane into the U.S. Air terminal at Washington National Airport. He carried only hand luggage, so he didn’t have to wait at the baggage carousel where someone might recognize him. He needed just one person to recognize him—the driver who was picking him up. At six foot one, with his fair hair tousled and with almost chiseled fine features, and dressed in light blue jeans, cream shirt and a dark blue blazer, he made many women rather hope that he would recognize them.

The back door of an anonymous black Ford was opened as soon as he came through the automatic doors into the bright morning sunlight.

He climbed into the back of the car without a word and made no conversation during the twenty-five-minute journey that took him in the opposite direction to the capital. The forty-minute flight always gave him a chance to compose his thoughts and prepare his new persona. Twelve times a year he made the same journe

y.

It had all begun when Scott was a child back in his hometown of Denver, and he had discovered his father was not a respectable lawyer but a criminal in a Brooks Brothers suit, a man who, if the price was right, could always find a way around the law. His mother had spent years protecting her only child from the truth, but when her husband was arrested, indicted and finally sentenced to seven years, the old excuse, “There must have been some misunderstanding,” no longer carried any conviction.

His father survived three years in prison before dying of what was described in the coroner’s report as a heart attack, without any explanation being given for the marks around his throat. A few weeks later, his mother did die of a heart attack, while he was coming to the end of his third year at Georgetown studying law. Once the body had been lowered into the grave and the sods of earth hurled on top of the coffin, he left the cemetery and never spoke of his family again.

When the final rankings were announced, Scott Bradley was placed first in the graduating class, and several universities and leading law firms contacted him to ask him about his plans for the future. To the surprise of his contemporaries, Scott applied for an obscure professorship at Beirut University. He didn’t explain to anyone why he needed a clean break with the past.

Appalled by the low standard of the students at the university and bored by the social life, Scott began to fill his hours by attending courses on everything from the Islamic religions to the history of the Middle East. When three years later the university offered him the Chair of American Law, he knew it was time to return to the United States.

A letter from the dean of the law faculty at Georgetown suggested he should apply for a vacant professorship at Yale. He wrote the following day and packed his bags when he received their reply.

Once he had taken up his new post, whenever he was asked the casual question, “What do your parents do?” he would simply reply, “They’re both dead and I’m an only child.” There was a certain type of girl who delighted in this knowledge—they assumed he would need mothering. Several of them entered his bed, but none of them became part of his life.

But he hid nothing from the people he was summoned to see twelve times a year. They couldn’t tolerate deception of any kind, and were highly suspicious of his real motives when they learned of his father’s criminal record. He told them simply that he wished to make amends for his father’s disgrace, and refused to discuss the subject any further.

At first they didn’t believe him. After a time they took him on his own terms, but it was still to be years before they trusted him with any classified information. It was when he started coming up with solutions for problems in the Middle East that the computer couldn’t handle that they began to stop doubting his motives. When the Clinton administration was sworn in, the new team welcomed Scott’s particular expertise.

Twice recently he had penetrated the State Department itself to advise Warren Christopher. He had been amused to see Mr. Christopher suggest on the early-evening news a solution to the problem of sanctions-busting by Saddam that he had put to him earlier that afternoon.

The car turned off Route 123 and came to a halt outside a pair of massive steel gates. A guard came out to check on the passenger. Although the two men had seen each other regularly over the past nine years, the guard still asked to see his credentials.

“Welcome back, Professor,” the uniformed man finally offered before saluting.

The driver proceeded down the road and stopped outside an anonymous office block. The passenger climbed out of the car and entered the building through a turnstile. His papers were checked once again, followed by another salute. He walked down a long corridor with cream walls until he reached an unmarked oak door, he gave a gentle knock and entered before waiting for a reply.

A secretary was sitting behind a desk on the far side of the room. She looked up and smiled. “Go right in, Professor Bradley, the Deputy Director is expecting you.”

Columbus School for Girls, Columbus, Ohio, is one of those establishments that prides itself on discipline and scholarship, in that order. The director would often explain to parents that it was impossible to have the second without the first.

Breaking school rules could, in the director’s opinion, only be considered in rare circumstances. The request that she had just received fell into such a category.

That night, the graduating class of ’93 was to be addressed by one of Columbus’s favorite sons, T. Hamilton McKenzie, Dean of the Medical School at Ohio State University. His Nobel Prize for Medicine had been awarded for the advances he had made in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery. T. Hamilton McKenzie’s work on war veterans from Vietnam and the Gulf had been chronicled from coast to coast, and there were men in almost every city who, thanks to his genius, had been able to return to normal lives. Some lesser mortals who had trained under the Nobel Laureate used their skills to help women of a certain age appear more beautiful than their Maker had originally intended. The director of Columbus felt confident that the girls would be interested only in the work T. Hamilton McKenzie had done for “our gallant war heroes,” as she referred to them.

The school rule that the director had allowed to be waived on this occasion was one of dress. She had agreed that Sally McKenzie, head of student government and captain of the lacrosse team, could go home one hour early from afternoon class and change into clothes of a casual but suitable nature to accompany her father when he addressed the class later that evening. After all, the director had learned the previous week that Sally had won an endowed national scholarship to Oberlin College to study chemistry.

A car service had been called with instructions to pick Sally up at four o’clock. She would miss one hour of school, but the driver had confirmed that he would deliver father and daughter back by six.

As four chimed on the chapel clock, Sally looked up from her desk. A teacher nodded and the student gathered up her books. She placed them in her bag and left the building to walk down the long drive in search of the car. When Sally reached the old iron gates at the entrance to the drive, she was surprised to find the only car in sight was a Lincoln Continental stretch limousine. A chauffeur wearing a gray uniform and a peaked cap stood by the driver’s door. Such extravagance, she knew only too well, was not the style of her father, and certainly not that of the director.

The man touched the peak of his hat with his right hand and inquired, “Miss McKenzie?”

“Yes,” Sally replied, disappointed that the long winding drive prevented her classmates from observing the whole scene.

The back door was opened for her. Sally climbed in and sank into the luxurious leather upholstery.

The driver jumped into the front and pressed a button and the window that divided the passenger from the driver slid silently up. Sally heard the safety lock click into place.

She allowed her mind to drift as she glanced out of the misty windows, imagining for a moment that this was the sort of lifestyle she might expect once she left Columbus.

It was some time before the seventeen-year-old girl realized the car wasn’t actually heading in the direction of her home.

Had the problem been posed in textbook form, T. Hamilton McKenzie would have known the exact course of action to be taken. After all, he lived “by the book,” as he so often told his students. But when it happened in real life, he behaved completely out of character.